Edouard Drouyn de Lhuys was a French statesman and diplomat, born at Melun in the department of Seine et Marne. He was educated at the College of Louis-le-Grande. The scion of a wealthy and noble house, he excelled in rhetoric. He quickly became interested in politics and diplomacy.

He was ambassador at The Hague

The Hague

The Hague is the capital city of the province of South Holland in the Netherlands. With a population of 500,000 inhabitants , it is the third largest city of the Netherlands, after Amsterdam and Rotterdam...

 and Madrid

Madrid

Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...

, and distinguished himself by his opposition to Guizot. Drouyn de Lhuys served as Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1848 to 1849 in the first government of Odilon Barrot

Odilon Barrot

Camille Hyacinthe Odilon Barrot was a French politician.-Early life:Barrot was born at Villefort Lozère. He belonged to a legal family, his father, an advocate of Toulouse, having been a member of the Convention who had voted against the death of Louis XVI. Odilon Barrot's earliest recollections...

. In Barrot's second government, he was replaced by Alexis de Tocqueville

Alexis de Tocqueville

Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville was a French political thinker and historian best known for his Democracy in America and The Old Regime and the Revolution . In both of these works, he explored the effects of the rising equality of social conditions on the individual and the state in...

, and was appointed ambassador to London. He returned briefly as foreign minister for a few days in January 1851, and then returned permanently in the summer of 1852, becoming the first foreign minister of the Second Empire

Second French Empire

The Second French Empire or French Empire was the Imperial Bonapartist regime of Napoleon III from 1852 to 1870, between the Second Republic and the Third Republic, in France.-Rule of Napoleon III:...

. He resigned his post in 1855, during the Crimean War

Crimean War

The Crimean War was a conflict fought between the Russian Empire and an alliance of the French Empire, the British Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the Kingdom of Sardinia. The war was part of a long-running contest between the major European powers for influence over territories of the declining...

, when the peace preliminaries he had agreed to in consultation with the British and Austrians at Vienna were rejected by Napoleon III.

Édouard Drouyn de Lhuys returned to power 7 years later, in 1862, when foreign minister Édouard Thouvenel

Edouard Thouvenel

Edouard Antoine de Thouvenel was ambassador to the Ottoman Empire from 1855 to 1860, and French Minister of Foreign Affairs in 1861 and 1862.-Notes:...

 resigned over differences with Napoleon on Italian affairs. Drouyn was thus foreign minister in the lead-up to the Austro-Prussian War

Austro-Prussian War

The Austro-Prussian War was a war fought in 1866 between the German Confederation under the leadership of the Austrian Empire and its German allies on one side and the Kingdom of Prussia with its German allies and Italy on the...

. In the aftermath of that war, which was seen as disastrous to French interests in Europe, Drouyn resigned.
He withdrew into private life after the collapse at Sedan

Battle of Sedan

The Battle of Sedan was fought during the Franco-Prussian War on 1 September 1870. It resulted in the capture of Emperor Napoleon III and large numbers of his troops and for all intents and purposes decided the war in favour of Prussia and its allies, though fighting continued under a new French...

 in 1870.

See also

• Internationalization of the Danube River
  Internationalization of the Danube River
  The Danube River has been a trade waterway for centuries, but with the rise of international borders and the jealousies of national states, commerce and shipping has often been hampered for narrow reasons. In addition, natural features of the river, most notably the sanding of the delta, has often...